Not Your Average Yank Chick
by JoeBoxer14
Summary: Post OotP. In light of the upcoming war, the Ministry finds it necessary to hire an unknown, foreign spy whom is to keep an eye on Harry and report the happenings at Hogwarts. Unfortunately, this undercover agent isn't too keen on authority.Ships for all!
1. Chapter One: Entrapment

_**A/N**: Okay, I have edited and reposted this with the hope that someone out there may find it entertaining, but if no one is at all interested in it, I completely give myself up to your flaming criticism. I will not, however, delete it. I first had the idea to write this about two years ago after I read and evaluated the fifth book for the sixth time. I am fully aware that JK Rowling firmly stated that there would not ever be an American transfer student at Hogwarts (even though, technically, my character is not a transfer student), and I accept that under my creative rights to post anything my imagination can concoct. This work is individually written by me, and I disclaim any ownership of the Harry Potter franchise and works. This is my first ever fanfiction, and I have spent far too long talking myself out of posting it, so here it is. I plan to make my character Faith as unMarySueish as I can without losing what drew me to create her in the first place. Another thing I would like to mention is that this is a 6th-year-fic, and is technically AU, but I tried very hard to include a lot about the fifth book to remind readers of what happened. Personally, I was unbelievably disappointed in _Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince_. I hated it so much that in the middle of the fourth chapter, I actually burst into tears. So, as you will see in the next chapter, I have changed a few things I didn't like, such as how Troll (T) was a real grade. So I refused to put that in here. And I wasn't entirely sure if I wanted Scrimgeour to be the Minister of Magic, so I did the same with it. I also excluded all of that "Chosen One" stuff because I found it very childish and immature. One last thing that I would like to point out is that I mainly wrote this because, I for one, did not like how JK Rowling grew Harry into this unbelievably mature man in a matter of weeks. There was not enough emphasis put on the effects Sirius's death had on Harry, and I am here to change that. This fic was targeted at readers who aren't quite ready for Harry to grow up yet, and want another shot at enjoying a Potter work. And if you aren't satisfied with it, I welcome your comments with open arms._

_Thanks,_

_JB_

_**Chapter One: Entrapment**_

_Air._

Thoughts were smeared like tar in Faith Morgan's brain. Each memory was melting imperceptibly into the next as shapeless ideas flooded her mind with no sign of their natural order ever being restored. She sat on cold, hard, stone attempting to scour through her scrambled brain for a lost instinct that could tell her what it was her body was starved for. The response to her desperate antics was so distant, so remotely audible over the ringing in her ears; she almost didn't hear it. But it was there. She was sure. She needed air. She needed to breathe.

Her violently convulsing body throbbed as she forced her abused lungs to expand. The air was cold and bitter as it swept over her bleeding tongue and continued down her throat, freezing the tissue inside it.

It wound its way through her body searching hastily for her control center in hopes that it wasn't too late to deliver its precious substance. Thankfully, gases are unusually punctual. The oxygen quickened her thoughts, and she slowly began to absorb a vague perception of her surroundings. The atmosphere was damp and musty as was the stone floor she lay upon. With unopened eyes, Faith noted the abnormal darkness in which she inhabited and concluded with a note of pessimism, that she was indeed in Hell.

Suddenly, her instinctive primal fear set in. Her energy was indefinitely sapped, but adrenaline assisted her in lifting her swollen eyelids just enough as to that she could see. Her distended eyes proved to be an agonizing hassle as she struggled to gain sight through them. But even as the view was disfigured and blurry, she could still hazily make out two figures conversing in front of her in whispered tones.

Her ears had not entirely perked back up to speed, but it didn't take a lip-reader to decipher their subject of discussion. The shorter of the two kept stealing furtive glances back at Faith with timid apprehension in his watery blue eyes. He seemed to be pleading with the taller for something; Faith guessed by the way he was flailing his arms around.

All of a sudden, the tall one struck the other in the face, clearly in a frustrated attempt to shut him up. It was a wasted effort. He simply fell into a crumpled heap on the floor, whimpering pathetically.

Faith wanted to feel sympathy for the man, she really did. For he was, too, suffering greatly, but at the moment she couldn't bring herself to feel anything outside of fear and excruciating pain. The shorter man gave a resentful glare to the other then jerked his tear-streaked face toward Faith. Their eyes met. He must've not been expecting this, for he let out a raucous shriek and pointed a knarred, accusing finger in her direction.

The other wheeled his blonde head around and seemed just as taken aback at her consciousness, only instead of fear he wore an expression of loathing. He marched toward Faith, his boots echoing against the stone walls as he stepped, and positioned himself about six inches from her broken, battered nose.

_His face is so red, it makes his hair look yellow_, Faith mused dazedly, but a wand poking into her bruised throat interrupted her delusional daydreaming.

"What is it?" he demanded, threateningly. His deafening words resounded in Faith's bemused brain, bouncing off of all of her fragmented thoughts. She cast him a weary expression and reluctantly racked her brain for a sensible answer to his nebulous question. She silently waited for a hint of comprehension to dawn on her, but it never did. Her fatigued brain was still too shook up to solve even the simplest of tasks.

"I don't know", she choked at last, glaring daggers into the man's sadistic gray eyes.

He threw one last hateful glower at her, and then, with a flick of his wand, muttered something unintelligible.

Suddenly, Faith's body wrenched violently, jerking in all directions. Pain erupted from every pore of her being, while it gave way to brutal, uncontrollable tremors. Sweat beaded above her brow as she fought determinedly to keep from crying out in anguish.

But unfortunately, her inevitable human instinct hung onto consciousness, even though, at the moment, catalepsy would be a welcomed blessing. She strained to open her eyes, mainly in defiance. There was no way that annoying drama-queen of a Death Eater was going to keep her from having the last word.

"You European pansies are so quick to violence." she muttered indignantly, "You could try _verbalizing_."

The blonde man's scarlet face contorted into something resembling her Uncle Howard after she stole his car to go for a beer run. His constant sneer widened into a menacing snarl as he looked her dead in the eyes with an expression that she honestly couldn't decipher entirely.

"Fine.", he whispered, "If you dare defy me, you must face the consequences."

His deranged eyes darted to her wrists which were bound to the stone floor by shackles as he slowly, jerkily snapped his wand toward them. Faith winced as they slid off her slender wrists to reveal bloody abrasions, evidently caused from the bonds that now lay beside her.

The man wheeled his blonde head around toward the whimpering man in the corner only to screech to him what sounded like gibberish to Faith, but whatever he said must have been threatening because the smaller man crawled off into the other room squealing incessantly. Suddenly the blonde man turned back to Faith and barked to her, "Get up and duel, child. I have no more use for you otherwise."

It took a few seconds for the command to register in Faith's mind, but as it did she could feel her eyes widen in astonishment. He was _asking _her to fight him? As her mind unfogged, she struggled to remember the route out of her stone prison. Yes, it was all coming back to her. This was the perfect chance.

She shakily struggled to stand, surprising herself that she hadn't passed out yet. As she pulled up by the chains that lay at her feet, she managed to get herself into a somewhat standing position.

"Get your wand and prepare to die, silly child.", the man growled. The maniacal look in his twisted features only intensified with each passing second.

Faith slowly bent down and picked up her wand, and with the confidence that comes with the element of surprise, she threw her arm toward him and off the top of her head, yelled a quick incantation. She really had no idea exactly_ what _the spell she'd just cast was, but she sure as hell didn't stick around to find out.


	2. Chapter Two: Men and Mascara Always Run

_**A/N:** Okay, in this chapter, I tried to include as much information about the fifth book, as I could, and as you can see, I have changed a few things. Just a reminder, this is not the same Harry as you see in the 6th book, but a post-OotP Harry. I am sorry once again for the dramatic change, but this is how I pictured Harry being after Sirius's death. I probably even lessened the broodyness that normally accompanies this sort of thing, but all in all I tried, and that's all anyone can ask for._

_Thanks,_

JB 

_**Chapter Two: Men and Mascara Always Run**_

The humid fog surrounding Number Four, Privet Drive was heavier than it had been all week. With each gasp of breath Harry Potter took, this fact was reminded of him. But the constant beat of his sneakers against the pavement and the light-headed feel of adrenaline pumping throughout his veins, convinced him that no matter what the weather, this was where he wanted to be.

In the past few weeks, Harry had found a new way of channeling his recent emotion into something productive. Before, he had continuously chastised health nuts and joggers for waking up at 5 A.M. to exercise for the heck of it. It had all seemed like such a waste of energy to him at the time, but now, as the moist air whipped his flushed face and the road sang him a soothing monotonous tune, he finally understood why people sacrificed their sleep to do this.

Not as if Harry had been doing much sleeping lately considering what had happened over his fifth school year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Not only had his godfather died mysteriously and his first crush dumped him basically for a boy whom Harry had witnessed the murder of the year before, but he had learned that his life or death was prophesized by a drunk psychic not long before his parents died. It seemed as if his very existence was centered around people's lives ending, which, in retrospect, was somewhat true. But of course, if it weren't for his two best friends, Ron and Hermione, there was a slight chance that he would not even have any existence.

Before they had gotten out of school, Harry and his friends had been tricked into going into the Department of Mysteries in the Ministry of Magic to supposedly 'save' Harry's godfather Sirius from the notorious Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters, but upon discovering that it was all a hoax, they tried to flee. Unfortunately, adding to the fact that this was where Harry lost his godfather, Hermione, Ron, Neville, Ginny, and Luna were all injured in their desperate attempt to escape.

As Harry rounded the corner back to his current living residence (he chose not to refer to it as 'home') with his aunt and uncle, he slowed his sprint down to a jog so that he wouldn't wake them. Not out of politeness, no, but out of the new-arisen fear of stirring up a confrontation. Since school let out, Harry had tried his very hardest to stay out of sight and out of mind to the Dursleys, and they seemed to prefer it that way as well. After the ill-mannered threat they received at King's Cross Station last May, they had been rather ignorant of Harry's presence at all. When before they would scream and throw objects at him, now they just pretended as if he wasn't even there, which was fine by him to say the least. Even Dudley seemed to be wary of Harry lately. After the run-in with the loose dementors last summer, he must have decided that the best thing to do was to stay out of the little magic boy's way. But even as Harry was beyond thankful for these things, it gave him much more free time than he knew what to do with. Usually, he would read letters from Hermione or Ron, or he would catch up on his summer homework, but that still left half of the day, which in his opinion, gave him too much free time to think. Running was something he really enjoyed, mainly on account of it made it very hard to process a complete thought, so there was no constant questions of "Why, How, When" flitting through his mind. But he couldn't run all the time, and this made it very difficult to suppress his feelings from the past year, feelings which he was ashamed to admit he had.

Lack of sleep and malnutrition— resulting from Dudley's new diet— was starting to take its toll on Harry, emotionally and physically. He knew this, yet he could do nothing about it. He was developing dark circles underneath his eyes and frown lines were starting to form around his mouth. His face was beginning to resemble a sixty-year-old man rather than a teenage boy. But lately he really couldn't bring himself to give much of a flying flip whether or not he looked presentable. His life lay in shambles at his feet, and he accepted it without a fight. To be blunt about it, his past was full of death and despair, his present was full of death and despair, and it was prophesized that his future would be full of death and despair, so why not embrace it? The only thing he could do was lie and wait until he could move out of his relatives' house and face Voldemort for the last time, which wasn't at all something he looked forward to.

Harry stopped at his aunt ad uncle's mailbox and stared at the house in which they slept soundly, with no worries of death or destruction ever finding _them_. He was almost envious. They had no great destiny to fulfill or war to wage. Their greatest concern was of someone of high social class finding out that they had a freak of a nephew living with them. Suddenly, it struck Harry that he really didn't want to go back into his room to read up on ancient goblin dictators for the ghostly Professor Binns. He looked out into the empty street that lay ahead of him and began walking.

Walking without aim was something he didn't do often, mainly because it gave his anguished mind free range to think of whatever it pleased. If there was one aspect of Harry's personality that had grown over the summer, it was his fear of letting his thoughts wander toward things he had no interest in contemplating furthermore.

So in an attempt to drown out the words in his head, Harry stopped at the nearby park that the aforementioned dementors had attacked he and his cousin Dudley last summer. Of course it had all been a power-hungry plot to get him out of the way, so that his ex-teacher, Delores Umbridge and current Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge could appear as if they had the ongoing war between the Minisrty and Voldemort under control. Just the thought of the two of them sent Harry's insides into a sultry rage.

But, within the past few weeks there had been a great buzz among the wizarding citizens that Fudge was to be replaced. The _Daily Prophet_ only dispensed vague information as to who was chosen to succeed him, but only because the Ministry would rather not have it known that their beloved minister may possibly be losing the election. Whoever it was that was campaigning against Fudge, was an undoubted shoe-in after the incident within the Department of Mysteries. People blamed Fudge for all of the unfortunate recent events, and despite persuading news articles, nothing could convince them otherwise.

Harry scanned the streets for any sign of authority figure that could mistake him for a vandal before he awkwardly vaulted over the locked park gate and trodded off toward the battered swingset.

He chose the one that seemed the less likely to crumble at his mere touch and, with a hop, sat down on the seat.

It took him a moment to recognize the cooling sensation near his buttocks, and as it slowly dawned on him that the front of his jeans were becoming damp with morning dew, he yelped in shock and bolted off of it, cursing softly under his breath as he did so.

Turning around to make sure no one witnessed this, he wiped the seat of his pants off in a hopeless attempt to rid them of any excess water. But as he did so, he noticed an extremely damp piece of parchment sticking out from his back pocket.

He reached into it and pulled out the long sheet of paper engraved with the Hogwarts wax seal. Suddenly it struck him that he had forgotten to read it, and in his haste to get out of his house, he had placed it in his pocket. He obviously hadn't examined it or else he would have realized that this was from his school.

Harry opened it up to reveal a list of supplies he would be needing for the following year, and a date and time when the train left for Hogwarts. He flipped the paper over to check for any additional information on the back when another piece of parchment fell out of it.

Harry reached down to pick up the small sheet of paper and slit it open curiously.

Ordinary Wizarding Level Results

_ Pass Grades Fail Grades_

Outstanding (O) Poor (P)

Exceeds Expectations (E)Dreadful (D)

Acceptable (A)

_Harry James Potter has achieved:_

Astronomy A

Care of Magical Creatures E

Charms E

Defense Against the Dark Arts O

Divination P

Herbology E

History of Magic D

Potions O

Transfiguration E

Suddenly, Harry realized that he was forgetting to breathe. He reread the piece of parchment over and over again, squinting his eyes in his wander that maybe he was hallucinating . He made it... He had aced Potions! He had the required grades to become an Auror! How he had done it, however, he had no idea. He read over it once again refusing to blink as he did this, and for the first time in weeks he grinned like a six-year-old overlooking a gigantic cookie. He had only failed two courses, and they had no say in his becoming an Auror! He had done well beyond what he thought he could, and was darn well proud of himself for it. After passing out during his History of Magic Exam and having not one Divinating molecule in his entire being, even those tests seemed justified. His smile widened until he could feel his jaw ache, and he abruptly felt the instinct to run back to his room, pull out his quill and parchment, and write Ron, Hermione, and Sirius a letter.

But suddenly the grin faded from his face, and was soon replaced by his newfound trademark grimace. Harry could already feel the guilt rising up inside his throat, and, as this was his usual manner, he pinched the bridge of his nose and blew out a shaky breath. This was how he spent his time lately. It seemed somewhat pointless to him to embellish in his so-called 'success' when the real gist of his self-worth was reflected upon the missing area in his heart where Sirius had once filled. He had failed, and no test transcript could change that. Harry squinted his eyes in frustration as he felt them cloud up once more. But as was his normal routine, he shook his head and mentally reprimanded himself for being so emotional. Sirius would have never wanted Harry to cry over him. Instead he would have told him to be a man and fight it. He had to be strong, not only for himself, but for everyone else as well. What would his friends think if they saw him fall to pieces over something like this? That he couldn't take care of himself? That he couldn't take care of them? He could not have that. Harry was a man now, and it was time he started acting like one.

So, in order to make this point unto himself, he leapt nimbly once again over the park gate and proceeded to do as he generally did. He ran.


End file.
